


You Meddling Kids, Sans Dog

by jackabee



Category: Homestuck, Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Faking your own death, Gen, Going into hiding, M/M, Moving to a new town, Sending people in the mail
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-23 13:06:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackabee/pseuds/jackabee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her Imperious Condescension has come to claim Earth for her own, and she is out for the blood of her Heiress and any and all who oppose her. But it's kind of hard to follow through with that plan when the only town you can't crush put a ban on wheat and wheat by-products.</p>
<p>Or, one by one, the Alpha Kids find themselves with no choice but to make themselves comfortable in a desert burg they call Night Vale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jane

**Author's Note:**

> What started as a sting of inspiration at work ended up as a thank-you for 400 Tumblr followers, as well as a treat for my usual readers. I do hope you enjoy a little more self-indulgent work on my part!

This was the town where secrets go to hide, of that you were assured. Your Dad couldn’t know that you were still alive, they were watching him like hawks as he cries at an empty grave, and you try not to think too hard on it lest it break you beyond repair. Your friends, well, you can’t contact them anymore, not through the usual means anyway. The three of them were working together on a way you could send them messages completely undetected, but the monster of a great grandmother you used to not believe in has her tendrils ensnared in everything. It would take them time to circumvent her. So, for now, you are a young lady very much alone and not as far from home as your pursuers think, and yet somehow, this was the safest place to be.

“Time doesn’t work here like it does in other places,” Says your contact. He is a grown man, dark, with hair graying at the temples and straight, straight teeth. You take a picture of him with the future intent to show him off to Roxy and Dirk, because oh will they appreciate such a man. You’ll show Jake and ask if he’s sure he doesn’t have any relatives squirreled away somewhere. “And things are…inherently strange, one could say. But as a scientist, I can assure you that you’ll like it here, Miss Jane.” He only called you Miss Jane because, no matter how many times he insisted, you couldn’t keep yourself from calling him “Mister Carlos”. The man is near your Dad’s age and far too pretty for his own good, you have to keep your distance somehow.

He rattles off a few things you needed to know as you roll out of the desert and into the sandy burg. He points out Big Rico’s Pizza by his lab to let you know that citizens had to eat there once a week, and that the gluten free pizza pies really weren’t so bad if you added a _lot_ parmesan cheese to them. He slows only briefly by an empty and gated dog park and implores you not to investigate – it was dangerous inside, he says, and citizens pretended the place didn’t exist. People have been trapped in there, he says.

“Very suspicious,” you mumble, and he laughs and pats your shoulder in a way that implies that he is completely serious. When he says something similar about a bowling alley and takes a hand from the wheel to hold his side, a gesture you’re almost certain even he’s not aware of, you take his warning a bit closer to heart and you’re not sure why.

He pulls into an Arby’s and lets you sit in the car as he picks up something to eat, and you gaze in wonder and insatiable curiosity at the glowing lights that hover above. You wonder how long you’ll be living here. Roxy’s mother had arranged it all for you without expecting a thing in return, but you’d like to repay her someday for her kindness. You still have to change the bandages from where you were impaled, it was only through sheer luck that you lived and only a matter of time before you were attacked again.

“It’s really fine,” She had said when you saw her last, boarding the plane with a duffle bag and the clothes on your back, “The City Council owes me a favor. It was either use it for your sake, or let it go to waste.”

You don’t notice that Mister Carlos has returned until he presses a cold cup to the back of your neck, and you jump and shriek and he laughs and apologizes, handing you a jamocha shake as a peace offering, his other hand tight around the tops of two large paper bags.

“That’s an awful lot of Arby’s,” You say. Mister Carlos shrugs.

“Your host insisted. I think he’s going to sneak the leftovers to the cat that frequents where he works. Wouldn’t be the first time.” He starts up the car, headed at last to the apartment where you’d be staying for who knows how long. Roxy’s mother has already sent a bed set for you, among other things, and your host had already set it up on his pull-out couch with a spring in his step and an excitement thrumming through him. He can’t wait to show you around.

It is so very warmly that you have been welcomed…to Night Vale.


	2. Roxy

“No, no, Rosie, the mint julep is for the young one. I know _you_ don’t drink, Erika is bringing you lemonade.”

This kind of thing is why you love summer stays with Old Woman Josie. She doesn’t judge you for nothing, never has and never will, and you can chill out with your underage self on her front porch and sip the drinks she makes so well and stare out at the car lot and nobody can give you shit, except your Mom of course. But she doesn’t count.

“We passed through Desert Bluffs on the drive in,” Your Mom says, and she cooly ignores the hiss of disappointment from your host. “I hadn’t realized they’d taken such a liking to red.” She was talking, of course, about the spires. You had seen them too, slowly working upwards towards the stars. Somehow they were easier to look at than the town itself. You really are glad your Mom never found herself in Desert Bluffs.

“Is it still safe for-” You start, but Old Woman Josie cuts you off with a waggling finger.

“We don’t hear anything about anything so long as red’s concerned,” She says, and sips noisily from her drink. Your Mom crinkles her nose just slightly, and you fight down a cheer for her rustled jimmies. “There was a bit of funny business with a sandstorm concerning the ‘Bluffs, but, well, funny business rarely repeats itself ‘round these parts, you know that Rosie, and I don’t think the fella knows he came here in the first place.”

Your Mom hums and leans back in her chair, eyes glancing towards the black Erika that leaves her a tall glass of lemonade. (You’d been trying to come up with ways to tell them apart. There is a reason, after all, why you spent an hour passive-aggressively arguing about shelf liners in the guest room while Frigglish made himself at home.) She looks like she fits in here, Miss Rose Lalonde, more than she ever did in your lonely mansion in the Adirondacks and more than she ever would at a midnight book signing in New York City. Wherever she goes she’s mismatched, like a small and complicated piece held up against a puzzle too simple and bright and different to accept it. Briefly, you wonder if you’ve ever looked the same, if in this town you are clicked in place next to her and fit snugly into the landscape.

You take a gulp of mint julep to forget that thought.

“Safety is my primary concern,” Your Mom says, and she finally lifts her own glass, holding the rim by her fingertips and swirling it slightly. The ice and glass clinking together is the closest thing to the sound of wind chimes you’ll get today. “If I didn’t think the Sheriff’s Secret Police could do their job, I wouldn’t have even considered this. I fully intended to keep Roxy by my side the whole way through, but…” She trails off, an odd look in her eyes. There’s a lot about this Batterwitch business she hasn’t told you, it must weigh heavily on her mind. Most of what you know, you’ve had to weasel out of Dirk.

Old Woman Josie nods sagely. “The children are our only chance for survival,” She says, “The angels did tell me that. There might not be a whole way through for you and I, though for different reasons.”

That assumption – “Are you sayin’ my Mom’s gonna die?” You blurt out, only somewhat slurred and fully distressed. Old Woman Josie tuts.

“It’s a fact and not an assumption! The angels don’t have to tell me someone will die for them to die someday.” Your Mom did not fight her on that. You glance at the angels milling about as if it’s completely natural for them to laze about this house and not in their places in the hierarchy of angels, whatever that might be. You wonder if you’ll make friends with them too, in time. You wonder if they’ll whisper fates into your ear, and you sincerely wish against that.


	3. Jake

When you first see the red ships, you jam as much food and ammunition and movies into your sylladex as you possibly can and head for the hills. Dirk had warned you weeks ago of their coming, and you never questioned how he knew – he was your best friend, the only one you could still reach out to, and he would never steer you wrong.

It was under the guise of rounding up the white beasties of Hellmurder Island, but the Batterwitch was looking for you.

She might have seen you just once, when you were hiding out in a cove. She was swimming in the moonlight, and you are a foolhardy and curious boy. Her eyes, you now know, run pure tyrian, and her smile was a pit of gleeful razors. As much as the internet speculated about how much of a dynamite figure she had, you weren’t dumb enough to see if it was true.

It was three days in that you encountered him. You couldn’t really describe what he looks like, because you would forget his face the moment you looked away, so as time went on you picked him out from the drones by his tan jacket and leather suitcase, both of which he was never without. At first they made him an easy target, and you were alone and frightened and a little trigger happy, but you never could hit him. As soon as you flicked the safety off of your girls, the latches of his suitcase sprang open, and swarms upon swarms of flies fell upon every bullet you fired, and he always escaped unscathed.

One day, when the stress of prey was at its peak, you got sloppy. You stepped on ground that was so obviously tampered with, and up, up you went in a red net that had once laid taunt and ready for you. He appeared below you soon after, and you struggled and strained and called him a cowardly cur, among other unsavory things. When you finally exhausted yourself, he spoke, and you learned very quickly that he was not a cur at all. The flies from his suitcase came out and freed you easily, no ill will in their actions. (Well, maybe some, because there was one that bit you, you’re sure of it.) They were trained, the man said, very special flies.

There was little time to build trust in the man with the tan jacket, for he too was being hunted by the drones, though for what purpose he would not say. Then again, it took very little for someone to earn your trust, and when he proposed the notion of a sanctuary, you jumped at it. That is why, at this moment, you are waking, groggily and possibly upside down in a cramped box with one mesh air hole. You hoped you would reach the place the man told you about, because any place was better than a slow and sure death at the hands of that terrible thing with tyrian eyes. It’s very possible that she controlled the postal system. It’s very possible that she’s waiting just outside this flimsy cardboard shell and will stab you through as soon as she knows you’re awake-

There’s the sound of peeling tape, and the box warps and shifts before it opens and oh, oh is it bright, you think somebody’s peeking in at you but you’re covering your eyes, it hurts so much. “Devil fucking _dickens_ ,” you groan, your voice all rasp, “Pity a poor chap and tell me I’ve arrived in Night Vale!”

A beaker shatters, its contents fizzing on the floor nearby. There’s a sharp gasp.

“Is that a _boy_ in the mail? Holy crap, who did it? Was it you, Giles?”

“I didn’t order him, someone sent him here-”

“You’re going native, dude, come on, snap out of it-”

“He looks just like her,” Says a voice, “Remember, back at school about twenty odd years back? Professor English with the nuclear physics department – hey, give him some air!”

You faint with the knowledge that you are, at the very least, not in the Batterwitch’s clutches.


	4. Dirk

You were not living in the crappy apartment with the cheap and cheery linoleum floor in the kitchenette by yourself. You were not alive. You had followed your brother to the Grand Canyon while he filmed _Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff: teh Reckoningering Part Three point Seven_ (granted, there hasn’t even been parts one or two yet, but that was the whole point). You were a dumbass and you leaned too far out over the edge. The body they plucked from the Colorado River was yours, and unrecognizable. The money from said movie, expected to make bank with the ties to the tragedy, was most certainly not being funneled through several illegal and at least one black magic-related method into your anonymous bank account. You are not looking for a job to pass the time.

That is your story, and you are sticking to it, and your neighbor, simultaneously your employer nods acceptingly when you rattle it off with a cold stoicism that has been passed down in the Strider family line for generations.

“I did have a ghost intern once or twice,” He muses as the weather plays. You’ve never been to a town where a forecast could be so clear in notes and beats, and it is absolutely amazing. Truth be told, everything about this place is amazing. Weird as hell and hella sketch, but hey, you don’t see a single piece of Fish Hitler in this town of purple and black. You can roll with it.

“Did they make you ghost coffee?” You ask. He laughs. This guy right here is the best part of it all, this Cecil guy with his purple argyle and the tats peeking out from his rolled up sleeves and his innocently disarming smile, with his voice that sends shivers up your spine, that makes you want to fall into warm dreams. Often you have to remind yourself that he does indeed have a boyfriend and it would be very rude of you to smooch his face. You wonder how Roxy’s mom came to know him.

Cecil lights up at your quip. “Yes! Yes, they did! Have you ever had ghost coffee, Dirk? It’s absolutely delicious!” He leans back in his chair and folds his hands in his lap. “It’s too bad ghost interns don’t apply for our ‘Longest Living Intern Award’. Perhaps if Dana, or her doppelganger, does indeed pass on, the award will pass to you.”

You smirk. “Believe me, I don’t intend to go down so easily. I didn’t die out there just to die in here, you feel me?”

“Like a spider on my shoulder!” He salutes and presses an ear to his headphones to check the progress of the weather. He must still have time, for he glances up at you.

“So as our newest intern,” Says Cecil, “I have a project for you. The town’s weather shaman should be sending over next week’s forecast tomorrow, and seeing as Dirk Strider – the boy who is definitely dead,” He adds with emphasis, “Was once a young and prospective music maker, I was wondering if he could look it over and see if he could come up with something our dear listeners would understand. If it’s too much too early, I do understand.”

You shake your head immediately. “Hell no, that sounds right up my alley. Put down the phone, no need to call up Skrillex on this one Cecil, I am your man.”

You learn that composing the weather is a lot harder than it’s made out to be, but when everyone is ready for the beats you dropped in the form of one wild thunderstorm, pride bubbles up inside of you like never before.


	5. Carlos

When he first proposed the idea to you, you thought Cecil was crazy. “We can’t take care of a bunch of kids,” You say, “We don’t have the time, or the space, or the resources! They’ll have to go to school-”

“Too risky,” Cecil says, “They’ll be discovered.”

“Well the town needs some explanation as to why four famous children have settled in Night Vale!” You turn away from the painting in Cecil’s living room, the one you know for a fact to be bugged by the Sheriff’s Secret Police. “The Mayor already declared it illegal to mention all the red making its way across the country. You should have thought this through before you accepted that offer!”

He takes one of your flailing hands and pats it. “Miss Lalonde would not lead me astray, Carlos. She would not have charged me with the well being of these children, nor would she have stuck her neck out to the City Council, if she did not believe our little Night Vale could keep them safe, and that I could keep them hidden in plain sight. That’s what most things are, here. Even you know that.” Cecil looks into his kitchen. All four of the children are over, all bright and odd and more aware of what’s really going on than you could ever be, and yet nobody knows what the future will hold. They look so happy just to be together, knees touching knees, elbows touching elbows, gleefully eating flourless cake. You saw it in Jane when she first arrived, no doubt it was in the other three as well, that painful separation of self. They should not ever be parted.

“They’re a group of meddling kids,” He says, as if he’s testing the words on his tongue, “Sans dog, here to investigate our mysteries. Just like my perfect, beautiful Carlos.”

That’s what gets you in the end. Your body relaxes, and you can’t fight a smile. “You said you’d cut it out.”

“Oh?” He says in that way you love, unpracticed and off-guard. You end up kissing him for it later, when the children are asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...And that's all I got. Short little pieces on the beginning of something with the potential to be excellent that I wanted to share. Good night, everyone!


End file.
